Most times, foreclosures work out badly for everyone involved, including financial institutions, which may be very motivated to help keep you in your home. If you want to stay in your home and can afford partial payments, you should do everything you can to communicate this to the financial institution to which you send your mortgage payments. They want you to stay in the home because they will lose more money if they foreclose.

Use this motivation to negotiate – your position may be stronger than you realize!

The key is to reach out to the financial institution that receives your loan payments, which could be a mortgage servicer or a lender. A servicer is often a third party company your lender hired to process your payments and act as their agent in dealing with you. Servicers may also be lenders themselves, but not always. Your servicer makes almost all the decisions when it comes to your loan, including new payment plans and modifications to your loan agreement. The servicer also is the company that starts the foreclosure process.

If your loan is delinquent or in default, your servicer wants to talk with you. With so many loans having problems, however, they can sometimes be difficult to reach. Be persistent: you have nothing to lose and much to gain! Talking to the right person at the servicer’s office can make the difference between losing and keeping your home if it prevents the servicer from initiating or completing the foreclosure process.

On the other hand, if you are behind on your mortgage payments and do not communicate with the company that owns your loan, they will likely take your home through foreclosure and try to sell it themselves. The key is to be proactive and reach out to your servicer.

When you contact your servicer be ready to tell them:

­­* Your name
­­* Loan number
­* Property address
* Your daytime and evening telephone numbers
* A brief explanation of why you have missed one or more

   payments
­­* Whether you want to keep your house

* Your servicer’s telephone number should be on your most

   recent statement. Otherwise, look at a list of contact

   numbers for major servicers.
* View a listing of documents to keep on hand